Night of the Seagull: The Wonders of Female Sex Tourism in Bulgaria

A Danish Dream of Empyrean Bliss…

In 2002, I was in Sofia, Bulgaria of all places. It was rather accidental and impulsive, and part of a larger tour of Eastern Europe. I had originally traveled with friends, but had continued my journeys for an additional week before jetting home from Budapest.

Those who write about sex and are instinctively attuned to the secret lives of women are well aware of female sex tourism, which is usually associated with southern Europe, the Caribbean and Africa, and the idea is never a shock to me; rather, it is refreshing to talk about a freedom that we fully deserve. I have heard that 80,000 women travel yearly to Jamaica alone for the purpose, and I salute their efforts. Of course, there is a mildly amoral undercurrent; my sisters descend on poorer economies and are treated like royalty by local consorts, paying for wining, dining, and inevitably, round after round of apocalyptic screwing. But perhaps pleasure is had by all, in the most ethical kind of hedonistic exchange.

But reader, be warned, in this case I was not the “Shirley Valentine,” the huntress in quest of foreign meat. But a fellow Western tourist I encountered at the foot of Mount Vitosha ardently was.

That didn’t mean I couldn’t share in the adventure vicariously.

I was sitting on the veranda of my hotel, when I leaned over and observed my neighbor in the adjacent room on her own balcony, and we engaged in conversation. She introduced herself as “Brita” and was a divorced architect from Copenhagen, dark haired, elegant, with a fetching streak of Susan Sontag white through her hair; her age was indeterminate, but she had a touch of Charlotte Rampling-esque magnetism, enhanced by her poetic solitude. Was she 50? 45? It didn’t matter; she was magnificent.

The exchange began in cryptic code. She was looking for “Seagulls,” she said, and there were many at our hotel. We could both find one, if we liked.

“Yes, the birds of the sea are magnificent,” I mused. But I learned that “Seagull” is local jargon for male gigolos whose pay arrives indirectly in the form of dinners and promiscuously scattered money thinly disguised as unsolicited gifts. And I asked, quite frankly why a woman of her looks and distinction would hunt the “‘gulls,” she admitted that she liked the thrill of animalian rutting (my indelicate word, not hers), that she needed to focus on professional matters at home, that the courtesy she received (and the profusion of sexual favors) brought her back every summer. She was not alone; a larger posse of fellow Danes was here for the very purpose as well.

I had a drink with her at the bar that night, a red wine with the savor of sweet tarts, and watched her connect with a young local man, perhaps in his late twenties. They sat at a darkened booth, holding hands chivalrously, at apparent ease with the game in progress. He wore a suit, admittedly slightly threadbare, and exuded clear pride and responsibility in his duties.

Later that evening, weary from the wine, I retired to watch television with a glass of boza, a thick fermented beverage that reminded me, portentously, of an outsized semen sample. I was dressed only in my bathrobe, and had nearly fallen asleep in my chair when I heard a knock at the door. It was Brita, smiling, perspiring and energized. She announced, “We’d like you to watch.”

I was about to mutter, half-torpid, that she and her Seagull could come in to my room and watch the grim soap opera crackling across the screen, but then I absorbed her meaning and followed her beckoning finger and capricious smile into her room. She wore a silk red nightgown, which appeared to have been reemployed in a hasty moment, crumpled from the evening’s action.

Once in her room, the rest unfolded with exquisite ceremony. She cast the garment to the winds as she approached the supine Seagull, nearly fully tumescent. He looked magnificent, as did she; alluring in her seasoned grandeur, beautifully toned and clearly eager to demonstrate the skills of a veteran. She fellated him eagerly, and I could sense instinctively that this was a mere fluff, a ceremonial tribute to an instrument that had already served valiantly for at least one round.

And it was ready again, a minaret ascending in the darkness. I could see her impressively toned derriere and back, dappled by her splendid black and white tresses, an emblem of potent, empowered middle age, riding a rigid tower of power to ecstatic heights. I was transfixed by that perfect, mechanical fusion of swollen organs—the pure pleasure of the instant, the heavenly vision of a woman abandoned to undiluted pleasure.

And in the midst of my thoughts, they had shifted instinctively. The Seagull was now on top, thrusting like a sewing machine. My friend kept raising her head in a futile attempt to lick his nipples but her head kept cascading backwards into the pillow, caught in a whiplash of cascading pleasure, gasping in indecipherable tones.

I did not need a Rosetta stone to translate. She had announced her arrival in the Empyrean, borne aloft on the Seagull’s wings.